


Windowsill

by missi



Series: The Suburbs All are Sleeping (Tell Me How This Story Ends) [1]
Category: The Suburbs - Arcade Fire (album)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missi/pseuds/missi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My life is with you; I wait, you leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Windowsill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kastaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/gifts).



Eddie and Gina grew up in the suburbs of Houston, a hot Texas everytown with split-ranch style homes and two level Craftsman-styles on curving lanes and in cul-de-sacs. He'd been born in San Francisco, and she in Montréal, but both moved before any real conscious memory and can't remember any time they weren't friends. They knew they met when they were six and that they listened to Gina's mom's Dire Straits record over and over in the living room while she babysat for him and Will, that's what Gina's mom said. As tweens, he'd insisted she be allowed to ride bikes with the boys, awkward and kicked the tires of his own bike as he stood firm.

By the time they were seniors in high school, he was an odd artsy type, but well liked, came from a pretty good neighborhood and a pretty good family, parents still married, little brother, own bedroom, still played neighborhood hoop from time to time. She was a bright spirit, a bit rebellious but not quite an outcast, would sing as loud as she could from her small bedroom in a house on the wrong side of the tracks. They only had first period together, AP Studio Art, with a Timothy Leary sort of teacher who embraced multimedia pieces as well as Gina's occasional scat outbursts.

They had a regular schedule of late-night, not parentally advised, Thursday get-togethers with their crowd, fellow friends with pencils and paper and tambourines, hacky sacks and face paint, house paint, oils and watercolors, on the town's baseball diamond. Beatnik emo hipsters in 1996, Gina's regular ironic nickname was Phoebe, and Eddie's Ross, and their favorite movie was probably _Kicking and Screaming_ (when it wasn't _Fargo_ ). Things were a little different than they'd always been, more discussion of graphic design and desktop publishing, photo manipulation and dot com, and college. IBM was everywhere including the headlines and except the art labs. Everyone talked faster than they used to do and moved to match.

Gina got her letter of acceptance into the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for professional training in vocal jazz on a Wednesday. January 15, 1997. Her first choice. San Francisco, booming with the new but teeming yet with the old, Eddie thought he could go there, he didn't have to go to timeless New York. It wasn't a revelation to him that he loved her, hadn't he always?

He'd never lied to her, not at least without admitting he was full of shit, he was pretty sure that was love. He thought of her first to share, call, go, see. He'd never wanted to talk to anyone about the things he'd tell her, he always told her, this wasn't different.

So he told her.

It wasn't a revelation to Gina, either, but her face froze before she could stop it. She knew him well enough to know this would be it, regardless of the efforts she'd of course make after to be friends. She was afraid, though, for probably the first time in her life. This was bigger than her plus him, she felt it (he felt it), something was happening, and besides all that, he'd already bought a plane ticket, wasn't he going to sign a lease soon?

No. Eddie had to go to New York. That was where his art was, his heart, all he'd ever wanted from seven to seventeen, every time they talked about leaving. The School of Visual Arts, the museums, the boroughs, the **city**. And she wasn't ready yet, folded in against the tension building in the air outside to which he seemed so oblivious.

So she told him no.

Time sort of stopped, then Eddie left, quiet footfall out of the door, and he didn't say good morning to her in first period, and he didn't show up at night on Thursdays. He was polite but he'd started growing his hair out, so he hid his eyes behind it whey they spoke. Gina felt like that space in her heart was growing ever empty, but still she tried.

They graduated on a Saturday in May, the 31st, and they sat two apart in robes and caps, and Eddie never looked her way or really anywhere except the ground until his name was called to cross the stage. On Thursday, Gina gave it one last go.

She climbed the tree in his side yard to reach his window, the last time she'd tried this, it was 1992 and she'd broken a wrist. She was taller, though, and it wasn't much of a struggle before she was straddling a fairly sturdy branch and stage-whispering for him to come out this one last time before they all left. She crooked her hands around her eyes and pressed her forehead against the glass, came face to face with a distinctly bare room.

Eddie'd already left, and he'd always promised never to leave without her. It was what they shared first, the need to escape.

Gina pushed up against the glass, this was the suburbs, no one locked their windows, and up it went. She balanced briefly on the windowsill, then made her way into the room. Everything that was him was gone, his beloved PowerBook, his equally beloved easel. Guitar, camera, sketchbook, notebook.

Back out she went, back down the tree.

She got a tattoo in the morning, spare text in two lines down her spine, always hidden and always there. _toute ma vie, est avec toi / moi j'attends, toi tu pars_ She bought two white lilies and sturdy enough bobby pins to hold them, it was there at the florist that she noticed the cameras being installed at the stoplights, big brother, deep blue. San Francisco surely had them as well. New York probably invented them. Perhaps one had already taken a picture with Eddie in the background.

The light changed, and Gina crossed the street, nodded a hello to one of the utilities workers, and headed home to pack her bags. Her mother had a whole checklist of things to get done before she left tomorrow, different city but still her own escape.

**Author's Note:**

> I won't say this isn't the story I wanted to write - it is. It's just that it's only part of it. It's complete in and of itself, but all future entries in the series will also be for you, fair Kastaka, and they'll have all that yummy world war conflict you're after. I do hope you enjoyed it anyhow, and that it gives you the feeling of the _Suburbs_ you're looking for.


End file.
